Much of modern economic theory is based around a simple idea: Human beings maximize utility. But what is utility? Many people think of it as happiness or pleasure; British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the inventor of utilitarianism, conceived of it this way. But this isn't how modern economists think of the

At first glance it appears to be a crowning symbol of obnoxious rock star excess, yet a closer look reveals a deeper story about how a band used a tiny candy to alert them to major problems. The 1970s saw the rise of Van Halen. Like every band, when Van

There’s a multitrillion-dollar black hole growing at the heart of the world’s financial markets. Negative-yielding debt -- bonds worth less, not more, if held to maturity -- is spreading to more corners of the bond universe, destroying potential returns for investors and turning the system as we know

BitMEX Research examines the market dynamics of Lightning network routing fees and the financial incentives for Lightning node operators to provide liquidity. We identify the interrelationship and balance between Lightning routing fees and investment returns for channel liquidity providers, as a major challenge for the network, rather than the computer

Popular though they may be, lotteries, with their billion-dollar jackpots, come uncomfortably close to being taxes on those who can least afford them. Millions of lower-income people funnel a disproportionately large amount of their paychecks into lottery tickets despite prohibitive odds, numerous studies have found.But protecting people by ending

Among the recipients of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was Elinor Ostrom, for her analysis of economic governance, especially in relation to the commons. While this choice took many in the profession by surprise, her life-long quest for an understanding of successful common property resource management holds important

Music has Spotify. Video has Netflix. But journalism still didn’t have its own dedicated platform.As a former technology journalist myself, I thought that the lack of such a platform for journalism was pretty strange. Spotify not only helps me access all music, it also makes it easy to

If you can do this, demand for your product will increase and you will be able to charge more and make more.When IBM designed the PC architecture, they used off-the-shelf parts instead of custom parts, and they carefully documented the interfaces between the parts in the (revolutionary) IBM-PC Technical

Brendan Eich knows how the web works — and how to fix it.The inventor of JavaScript while at Netscape is now occupied with growing a new browser, Brave, which promises to be far faster than entrenched leaders like Google Chrome. The trick: Brave blocks data-hogging ads and flips the web’

Because monetizing your open-source project means you take on a second job.Here are your choices: Turn your OSS project into a company (Docker). The pro is that you can capture a lot of the value, the con is that you're splitting your project into CE/EE and also now